Was at the park yesterday. Yes, it was quite crowded. I don't have an AP anymore (I refuse to call them keys, lol), so I got the SoCal Holiday ticket, which meant I had to go three times all in a short span. So I imagine many others were in the same boat.
Despite it being pretty mobbed and a few rides going down, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We did not get any Lightening Lane nor make any dining reservation, but we still got a lot done: Rise, SM (x2), BTMRR, Tiana, Matterhorn (x3), HMH, Indy, IASM, MRR, Pirates, Smugglers, Mark Twain, Alice, Monorail, and Train. Mostly thanks to Single Rider lines, and the "breakdown" plan for Rise: watch the app and wait until it breaks down, then head over. It's a gamble, but it pays off more often than not. We waited 25 min for it to reopen, but once it did, we waited 15 minutes in the standby line to ride.
As for dining, we ate at Cafe Orleans, and just added our names to the walk up list the moment it opened for lunch. Just 45 min later (doing other rides and shopping as we waited), we were eating there without any prior reservation. For dinner, we went to the hotel. The Broken Spell lounge had little to no wait, but we ended up at Tangorora Terrance for the Pu Pu Platter.
In the bigger news, I saw people inside the new Parkside Cafe in Downtown Disney. I presume it to be training.
There was also some new (to me) merch at the new Mansion store, as well as Hotel and Trader Sam's merch at the hotel (all on my Bluesky).
Also gotta point it, this really irritates me, even more than the Mansion store using bought material. Can they not come up with something better here? It's such a Six Flags look.